Anyone got in trouble for piracy?

[Icarus]

Alright, I'm sure most of you fed up with these kind of topics but this is going to be different. What I'm looking for is "real people" who got in trouble here in GBATemp, or close friends that you know. DO NOT GIVE ME ANY NEWSPAPER ARTICLES OR ANYTHING, I want to hear from the "first perspective", not from the media. Also, DO NOT REPEAT THE "PIRACY IS ILLEGAL, GET OVER WITH IT" CRAP. We all know it, I just want to know if they're really enforcing these laws in practice. Piracy includes anything from downloading music, porn, movies to playing roms, fake games etc.

As for me, I haven't gotten into any trouble except for the emberrasment when you try to explain it to you friends[since none of them pirates stuff like I do]

 

[Sonicslasher]

sorry I couldn't resist

 

[FAST6191]

Aside from a sideways glance during high school (I actually had a halfway competent teacher at one point) and a letter from my old ISP saying we want to "upgrade" you but you are a filthy downloading punk so when you do clean up your act I am clean.

I recall some people around here getting ISP letters for more specific stuff but real life for me has nothing.

 

[Harsky]

Got into trouble giving a dvd movie I burned into a disc when I was in school. Funny thing was that the "punishment" was, "we're now confiscating the movie. If you want it back, you have to jump through hoops just to even touch it". Yeah... I'm really gonna miss one burned DVD.

But the real fear was if they contacted my parents more than getting a fine from a big company.

 

[Sinkhead]

My parents are REALLY anti-piracy. They don't really know why I keep receiving packages and stuff, but they respect my privacy because they understand if anything happens, it will all be my fault and I will take the blame.

- Sam

 

[nintendofreak]

Just about everyone I know does it. We all download games, movies, music. "I want to play [game name]"
"Check if its on [download source]"
"ohh yeaaahhh"

My parents pretty much dont know about it. They are not very knowledgeable about computers, so they only know what I tell them. I dont think they would see it as "stealing", it would be kind of weird to "steal" something that isnt really physical in their eyes.

 

[sekhu]

got an e-mail from my isp once about downloading something from a public torrent site, that was a while back, since only using private sites and the like, i haven't received a mail since.

i'm quite paranoid though and think i'll get another email saying the same thing again. it was specific in what i downloaded at what time etc etc. I just wrote back to my isp and told them it won't happen again, haven't had an email since

ftp is the best way to go if you can, they don't really monitor that traffic

 

[Law]

Not really, just the odd email from my ISP.

And to all of those with Anti-Piracy parents, let me say this one thing.

My father is just as bad as I am when it comes to piracy.

 

[Icarus]

What's with the letters from ISPs in England? I've never received any letter from mine here xD

 

[jargus]

Aside from a few friends calling me cheap, nothing has come of my DS "archiving."

 

[silverspoon]

.

 

[Psyfira]

What's with the letters from ISPs in England? I've never received any letter from mine here xD

It's more about evening out the bandwidth usage so they can provide a better service to all their customers than an anti-piracy measure. It's all about this thing called a "fair usage policy", if one person's hogging the bandwidth other users on the same ISP experience slowdowns because of it. One person doesn't make a lot of difference, but multiply that up to all users on the network and it's a nightmare. When ISP's notice high upload traffic they guess what you're doing because sharing large files back out to the rest of the internet is the only way someone could generate that much traffic. They can't tell whether the files are legal or not but send the letter anyway. So in effect they're tackling two problems at once, although combatting piracy is a side-effect rather than their main intention.

I only know this because my old ISP introduced a scheme after we signed up where if you went over a particular monthly download/upload limit they'd throttle your bandwidth for the rest of the month and that was how they justuified it. They kept changing those limits throughout the year, I was sharing a house with 5 other computer-using people and towards the end they dropped the limit to below what our computers would do under normal usage without downloads. 512kb/s ADSL shared between 5 is not fun.

 

[Mewgia]

iirc SpikeyNDS got a letter from his ISP about grabbing SOCOM for the PSP, he said something about it on a podcast I believe.

I myself have not gotten any warnings but I don't download much. As for family and freinds, well, my dad pirates music, my mom knows jack about computers, my friends pirate, nearly all teens pirate music anyway.

 

[bobrules]

got email from isp from ESA.For using torrenting a ps2 game.

 

[.::5pYd3r::.]

I haven't received anything about my pirating and anyway most of people around me encourage pirating. Like at school we sometimes get to watch movies and i brought in a pirated movie and also on the second last day of school we were allowed to play our DS's and when my teacher found out you could pirate DS games with an R4 he wanted one for his kids.

 

[Bruinbaard]

Yeah I helped like 2 or 3 people to an R4

.
Before me they didn't know about it.
I never ever bought a DVD or music only some games.

 

[Beware]

I got a letter threatening to suspend my friend's internet access for trying to get DreamWeaver once. That's the most that has ever happened (AFAIK).

Most people don't know jack about computers. Everything they know, I've told them. I, single-handedly, introduced DS and PSP hacking to everyone in my school (except for the couple of new kids who just got here this year who have R4s).

 

[jkdog855]

I was a member on EliteTorrents when they were taken down for releasing Star Wars Episode 3. The FBI didn't do a thing to any of the people that downloaded the stuff. Only the people that ran the site and uploaded the torrent got in trouble.

 

[Icarus]

I was a member on EliteTorrents when they were taken down for releasing Star Wars Episode 3. The FBI didn't do a thing to any of the people that downloaded the stuff. Only the people that ran the site and uploaded the torrent got in trouble.

Which is weird because all torrent sites states that the files aren't hosted on their site and they're not responsible for them.

 

[noONE]

My dad got a letter from his ISP a year or 2 ago , telling him that he had illegally downloaded "the day after tomorrow"(which was brand new then) and some other movie. this was all during a big "raid" of piracy in Sweden. So now we can't download anything..(illegal) (well I ain't allowed anymore by dad :/ ) which is quite sad, since we just got 100/10Mbit connection >_<
and he downloaded as much as me before that.